The Bible is poorly labeled as any single genre. It is a library, and it certainly contains fiction. But some of it is pure fiction, and some of it is historical fiction, and some of it needs other labels than those. Dr. James McGrath, stirring the pot as usual, raising some big questions, and providing a bunch of interesting links. Relatedly, here’s a helpful chart… Read More »McGrath asks: What’s a Bible?
In 1 Corinthians 8:6, Paul says, …yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. Is this statement by Paul a gift to unitarians (who hold that the one God is the Father, but not Jesus), or does he here… Read More »podcast 15 – Are Paul’s “one God” and “one Lord” one and the same?
Lutheran theology grad student Matthew Frost reflects on The Doctrine of the Trinity, and Scripture. Some insights: …because this doctrine is built on a scriptural foundation, we also have a tendency, in every generation, to read the doctrine as it stands back into the texts on which we have built it. And there’s a problem with that, namely: none of the authors of scripture, or their… Read More »Frost on Trinity and Scripture
Daniel Calder surveys the Top 7 weirdest Christian theologians. Of these, how many are atheists? Consider, for example, John Scotus Eriugena (c.800 – c.877). The author gives an encyclopedia quote which rings true to me. In general, the system of thought just outlined is a combination of neo-Platonic mysticism, emanationism, and pantheism which Eriugena strove in vain to reconcile with Aristotelean empiricism, Christian creationism, and theism.… Read More »7 Weird Theologians
Dr. James McGrath has responded to my post on belief in “God” where this amounts to an ineffable Ultimate – which, I claimed, is a variety of atheism. He seems to think that thinking that God resembles humans to any degree or in any way counts as “anthropomorphism.” I think that’s a goofy use of the term, but why quibble about words? So, in James’s… Read More »more thoughts on “God,” atheism, and panentheism
The apostle Paul famously says, …for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1 Corinthians 8:6) Is this passage a radical transformation of, or a redefinition of Jewish monotheism? Is it an insertion of Jesus into the Shema confession, that… Read More »podcast 14 – One God, One Lord, Two Interpretations
Not “inconceivable” – but rather, “God.” Check out this interesting post, The Dread God Roberts, at our friend Dr. James McGrath’s blog Exploring Our Matrix. (Which amazingly, just had its 10th birthday. He was blogging way before it was cool.) Dr. McGrath describes himself as a Progressive Christian. I commented over there, and he’s replied. The part of his post that got me going was this. Tillich’s… Read More »Atheistic belief in “God”
Suppose you want to really study my entry “Trinity“ in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. If you’re like me, when you want to really read something, you’ll print it out (and then proceed to destroy it with a pencil and a highlighter). And if you do print it all out, it’ll make your printer burst out in tears. The whole thing, with supplementary discussions, comes… Read More »“Trinity” in paperback form
“Liza, do you have any money?” “Nope.” “Hey – I see you’ve got money in your right pocket! Why’d you say that?” “I meant that I had no money in my left pocket.” “But that’s not what you said! You said you didn’t have any money.” “But it was true that I didn’t have any in my left pocket.” “Liza, what is lying?” “It is… Read More »Jesus is no Liza
Minister Jeremy Myers asks: “Did Jesus Learn?“ (HT: James McGrath on Facebook)
Great post. One favorite bit:
At one point in our discussion, I said, “Well, it seems logical that if Jesus was fully human, then He had to learn.” Their response was, “I don’t use logic. I just use Scripture.” I just about broke out laughing. It seemed pretty obvious to me that logic was not being used. Ha! One guy also kept saying, “I don’t speculate about Scripture. I just believe what it says.”
Oh, “logic” (really, human reasoning ability) was being used… just not well! 😉
In any case, he answers the question of the post affirmatively.
I agree with Jeremy that according to the New Testament, Jesus learned. Any theory about Jesus must incorporate this fact. And while he was doing that, there were truths he did not know.
But that gives rise to this argument:
I would say, in evaluation of this argument:Read More »Jeremy Myers asks: “Did Jesus Learn?”
At his blog An Open Orthodoxy. In (of course) three parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. I demur in some comments. Check out their posts and comment there. Tom Belt and Dwayne Polk are open theists. I take it that the title of the blog emphasizes that they are truly catholic – that on the things that really matter, they agree with mainstream Christians.… Read More »Tom Belt on the Trinity
I argue that the theoretical costs of Bauckham’s theory outweigh its theoretical benefits.
Here’s a sermon by my friend Pastor J. Dan Gill, expounding the important New Testament theme of the exaltation of Jesus. He discusses texts including Psalm 110 and Acts 2. You can download the audio of this sermon here. Dan and his wife Sharon run the 21st Century Reformation website, an important resource for biblical unitarians (aka unitarian Christians, one God believers, non-trinitarian Christians). Their… Read More »Pastor J. Dan Gill on the real Jesus
Somehow I missed this when it came out back in July. Our friend the Tentative Apologist Randal Rauser has a podcast (itunes) now, and he’s done a substantial, no-bs interview of leading Reformed analytic theologian Oliver Crisp, of Fuller Seminary. Listen to it at Randal’s blog here. Crisp does a good job presenting and giving a basic defense of the coherence of the traditional catholic… Read More »analytic theologian Oliver Crisp on the coherence of Incarnation
The Apostles’ Creed is one of the most beloved and most widely used creeds in the Christian world. Is it really by Jesus’s original twelve apostles? Why is it so popular? Is it the one truly uncontroversial creed, something which all Christians – Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, pentecostal, etc. can agree on? And is it the most ancient Christian creed we possess? We’ll answer these questions in this, our… Read More »podcast 12 – the Apostles’ Creed
Like most Christian philosophers, I think David Hume (1711-76) was brilliant, but mistaken about most of the important religious topics he wrote on. Though he says some silly things earlier in the chapter, I could not help but be impressed by this powerful blast of rhetoric from chapter 11 of Hume’s Natural History of Religion (1757). He speaks with all the bitterness and bile of an Enlightenment philosopher raised in a human-reason-hating form of Calvinist Christianity. In the end it is just rhetoric; I don’t see any interesting argument here against mysterians.
But I do agree with Hume that humans have an appetite for “mysteries” – be they apparent contradictions or simply very unclear but profound-sounding claims. I’ve commented on this, I think, as far back as 2003, before reading Hume on this. Philosophical faults aside, he is always an insightful observer of human nature and human history.
I’ve added some emphases and explanations in brackets and a link below. Full text is here.
But [in contrast to polytheistic traditions,] where theism forms the fundamental principle of any popular religion, that tenet is so conformable to sound reason, that philosophy is apt to incorporate itself with such a system of theology. And if the other dogmas of that system be contained in a sacred book, such as the Alcoran [the Qur’an], or be determined by any visible authority, like that of the Roman pontif, speculative reasoners naturally carry on their assent, and embrace a theory which has been instilled into them by their earliest education, and which also possesses some degree of consistence and uniformity. But as these appearances are sure, all of them, to prove deceitful, philosophy will soon find herself very unequally yoked Read More »David Hume vs. Mysterians
Though he’s the first on record to use the Latin word “trinitas,” he was in fact a sort of unitarian.
This week, an interview with Dr. Scott Williams, an analytic theologian, trained by some of the best out there, who loves to tackle those hard to read medieval philosopher-theologians like John Duns Scotus, Thomas Aquinas, and Henry of Ghent. Specifically, we discuss this recent paper of his, which I briefly discussed in a previous post. His main interest is in different versions of “LT” –… Read More »podcast 10 – Dr. Scott Williams on “Latin” Trinity Theories
The year was 1986. A young George W. Bush visited a psychic. “You have a great future ahead of you,” said the psychic, peering at the lines in Bush’s palm. “I know! My Daddy‘s vice president after all.” “Someday, you will be famous, for you will invade Iraq. Beware, oh ancient land, for Bush himself is coming to subdue you!” Bush was speechless. He couldn’t… Read More »proving that Bush = Sgt. Speedo
In this episode I get post-debate reflections from the (biblical) unitarian Christian debater, Steve Katsaras. He’s the founding pastor of the Red Words Church in Melbourne, Australia . His sermons are regularly podcasted here. If he sounds a little sleepy, that’s my fault; I asked him to talk to me on the same night as the debate, and he graciously agreed. We discuss highlights of… Read More »podcast 9 – post-debate interview with Pastor Steve Katsaras